STATISTICAL-MECHANICAL THEORY OF MEMBRANE-TRANSPORT

This paper is concerned with reviewing a statistical-mechanical theory of membrane transport, its range of validity, and its relation to previous membrane transport theories. We begin by addressing the question "what good is a theory?" and providing our answer thereto. The commercial membrane processes are then briefly surveyed. In the main body of the paper, the statistical-mechanical theory is applied to several processes (ultrafiltration, reverse osmosis, gas separations, dialysis, and electrodialysis), and simplified working equations are derived for each process. The central theme is that there is a unified statistical-mechanical theory of membrane transport, from which all previous theories can be derived. © 1990.